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The Taste of Pain
An anonymous reader writes "The more the human genome is unraveled and previously non-genetic based attributes are now associated with a specific genetic function, such as physical and emotional pain and taste, it seems, to me, that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes." A related article links your sense of taste to your risk for cancer, heart disease, etc.
...ducks and covers in anticipation of the whole "nature vs nurture" argument
I don't know why but images of Sarah Kozer from "Joe Millionaire" comes to my mind...
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Of course, this correlation is based on an increased taste for pork products and heart disease... might not be strictly genetic.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
It doesn't matter, once is too much!
The taste buds on your tongue are simply sensors, like your eyes, ears, nose, and hands. In fact, taste buds represent the least of all complex sensors of the human body. A taste bud is simply a receptor, waiting to bind to a molecule in solution in your mouth. Once the receptor binds to the molecule, it generates a signal that says, "bitter!" or "sweet!". Combinations of types of "bitter" and "sweet" represent the taste of the food, excluding molecules in the gas phase which are picked up by the nose. I read there were 27 or so types of "bitter" and only two types of "sweet".
Even a human nose is more sensitive than human taste buds. There are over a hundred different types of receptors in the human nose. (And thousands in the dog nose.) Looking at one's ears or eyes, the complexity involved in generating a highly analog signal, over time, and having that signal correctly analyzed is incredible.
And..we are not yet even talking about cerebral functions like reason, imagination, moods, memory, or even behavioral instinct!
Yes, finding the genes that code for the receptors of the tongue is really great. But do not assume that the amazing complexity of the human body, even excluding the brain, will be fully understood for quite a bit of time.
Salis
Favorite
It seems to me, on a philisophical note, that as the genome continues to be explored, we will continue to be surprised at what's found. However, the really interesting part will be when the project is finished, and we discover what was NOT found.
_Am
let's mention quantum physics and the illusion of free will. Of course your genetics have something to do with emotional pain, etc, for your genetics blueprint your life's development, and your particles are destined to spin in a decipherable pattern (of course only after you die can we decipher the pattern)...
this is not a sig.
So does this mean that people who smoke and thusly have lost most of their sense of taste run no risk of heart disease now? :)
(I am God). Nature determines the quantized machinery around the center of sentience. Nurture generally forms the nonquantized storage of the center of sentience. Nature in the end is trivial as the center of sentience is what's really important. In our unevolved state, however, the filters in the quantized realm become important.
I still lean towards nurture myself, but there is obviously a lot of complexity that we'll need to unravel before we know exactly where the balance lies.
The thing that worries me most about tagging personality to genes is that it gives some scientific justification for being racially prejudiced. I mean, if a certain genetic pool is genetically predisposed to a certain personality trait, then it only makes sense to assume that people of that group are likely to have the same traits. There's unlikely to be any hard tie between appearance and a trait, but any limited pool will harbor all traits equally, I think.
One could argue that "nature" gives rise to a similar argument - that a given culture is predisposed to give rise to certain personality traits. This even seems quite likely. So what's the difference between being prejudiced against a genetic family or a culture?
Well, to me the difference is critical. I can't escape my genetic makeup, but I can escape my culture if I choose to. (And personally this is something I've done, to an extent). Criticizing a culture is not as damning as criticizing a gene.
In any case, I do still lean towards nurture being the prime factor, and I feel that much of the research in neural networks supports this. I certainly hope we're not doomed to live out our genes. My guess is that genes provide the interface to the world, but the mind interprets it based on experience.
Cheers.
During grad school, many of my classmates had to take anti-depressants and other forms of medication in order to continue living a fairly normal day-to-day life.
Their concern over grades led to a very skeptical viewpoint on life, but my how their entire personality was changed simply by taking 1 pill per day.
Don't forget *nix either.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
You scientist schmucks.
Ack, I really need to quit watching mob movies.
(FYI: This was meant to be funny, it's saturday ... loosen up a bit ...)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
to me, that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes
Ok, so if our personalities were more influenced by Genes, then why aren't all Australians violent people that steal, rape and kill?
I seriously think that enviorment has alot more to do with it than anything. Perhaps there are Genes that make people lean slightly more towards agressive behaviors. But I think it's much more enviormental than anything else.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I still think it's a combination of the two. My cousin and I attended the same private school as children, yet she completed K through 12 at the school, while I only spent 4 years there. Our IQ's are nearly identical, but she had the better learning environment.
She's currently a doctor, while I work as a civilian for the government.
I wish luck would've been more on her side. Poor girl.
Sadly, I must cut this post short; I need to file a grievance with the Union, blame my co-workers for my ineptitude, and take the rest of the day off.
Dammit, someone changed my Freecell settings again... I'm taking a coffee break.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
>"...it seems, to me, that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes."
The hardware, that is shared between us all, is fuzzily defined by the genetic side
All the rest ( I see it as the software ) probably comes from education, culture, experiences... but is influenced by the hardware, as any implementation would be
Ideas ?
If I were you, I wouldn't go around admitting I watch crap like that.
Yeah.. if it tastes like a bacon double cheeseburger with a side order of curly fries and onion rings, then I can pretty much guarantee that it certainly won't help your ticker.
:)
If however, it tastes like fresh fruit or vegtables then i'd say you will fare slightly better
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Favorite quote from the last linked article:
"This is genetic -- what you taste determines what you like to eat," chief researcher Linda Bartoshuk, an experimental psychologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., told United Press International. "What you like to eat determines your diet, and your diet is a risk factor for all kinds of diseases."
So, dieting is like a form of gene control? Maybe gene therapy could be the basis for a new Weight Watchers... the profit making potential is limitless!
Simple, it is much more profitable to label it as a genetic problem than a personnality problem. I am sure we will see in the near future genetic therapy to cure you from being a bad far from normal human.
I am sure some scientists will find soon a genetic cure for people with "abnormal" personnality. REJOICE! We will all be politically correct.
"...it seems, to me, that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes."
What made it seem like that to you? Genes, I guess.
Not to be confused with The Smell of Fear.
They just don't make movies like that anymore (and some would say with good reason).
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
If the right kind of scientists figure out a way to genetically alter what people like, we could get rid of all those people who like velvet paintings, garden gnomes, and NASCAR racing!
Of course there is the darker side . . .
If he hadn't left us so prematurely, I'm sure the recent spate of genetic determinism would have given him enough material for another edition or two of The Mismeasure of Man .
RIP, Mr. Gould. You tried.
Science doesn't want to do anything. Science doesn't have motivations, it is simply the biproduct of a few centuries of observations and experiments. Science has produced evidence that a great deal of our personality is a byproduct of our genes. In the future, the exact nature and amount of that impact may or may not be completely understood. Saying that genes having an impact on our personality is just a rediculous excuse on the part of science is like arguing that the photoelectric effect is just an excuse science uses to explain flashy lights.
Chicken, pain tastes like chicken..
my sig
Most of the genes that play a role in behavior are explored in mice, and were discovered in the mouse genome project; in mice, you don't need to worry about inflicting only tolerable amounts of pain. So, most developments in neurogenetics come from the mouse genome project, or the C. elegans (a little tiny worm my colleagues upstairs like to study) genome project, not the human genome project.
The human genome project, as yet, has not produced a stirring new mandate for nature vs. nurture. In fact, since human beings have less than half as many different individual genes as was expected (we have less than 50,000; before the genome came out 100,000 was the most popular prediction) a great deal of our complexity/diversity must arise from something other genetics. That is to say, more complexity arising during our development, less complexity "pre-programmed". The behavior of little tiny worms is almost entirely controlled by genetics, but I wouldn't generalize from that.
Of course, we are going to find genes that influence our behavior in complex ways. There is no doubt about this; it was already known, for example, that some genes existed that impart a predilection for alchoholism. Finding such genes, individually, and further clarifying what they do should NOT be taken as an indicator of what role genes, in general, may play in specifying the diversity observed in human consciousness and behavior.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
You don't have comments enabled.
In this case it's well worth it to RTFA:
She's lovely
Maybe it's just in my genetic makeup to fancy raven haired beauties who lick lollypops... Rrr.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
"Oh and my favorite...gays are born that way"
Gays are the "worlds ills" ??????????
Since when did SlashDot become a home for bigotry, hatred and ignorance? I'd like to see intelligent comments modded up please, not hate-mongering.
Nobody has conclusive evidence as to why homosexuals are/become, and they certainly aren't the "worlds ills" for any reason.
Environmeent has been scientificly proven to be the most important factor in one's personality development for a long time. I could point you a any number of twin studies that confirm thst, but you all know how to use google, so I won't waste my time.
You haven't tasted Pain til you try my wife's cooking. /me passes slashdot he salt.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Not trying to inflame anyone, but I recall some experiments done on mice/rats that would produce homosexual behavior, every time, in developed animals if the hormonal balance was tilted in some way during the fetal stage. Anyone know more about this? Seemed like it was a rather solid study at the time.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
In Soviet Russia, pain tastes you!!
If genes were not far more important that environment you could teach a frog differential equations.
Yummy. Who doesn't like the taste?
It cannot be completely blamed neither upon genetics or enviromnent. It's a mix.
The body, including the brain, is mostly determined by the genes. The brain is a net of interconnected neurons, that everyone knows. What not everyone knows is that whatever we knows is not actually "recorded" on the neurons, but in the synapsis, that is, the brain interconnections.
We learn and reason mostly by electrical impulses flowing through the aformentioned net. There are basically 2 types of impulses: inhibitive and excitative. The results of a reasoning (that is, initial input everything you can "sense", final output your reaction) depends on how these impulses flow, what depends what sort of impulse reaches each neuron.
The ways these impulses flows depends on each neuron and each neuron is more likely to propagate one sort of impulse rather than the other (e.g 30% chance to propagate inhibitive and 70% excitative). But the sort of impulse that flows through a neuron can make it change its tendency (say, if a neuron gets more inhibitive impulses than excitative, in time the neuron raises its own lilkeliness to propagate inhibitive impulses).
Thus, the learning process depends, initially on two factors: the structure at time 0 (the initial structure, e.g. the brain when you are born) and the structure at the time a person receive the impulses (the brain after experimenting and processing all the impulses one got up to now). That means, genetics influence your behaviour because your brain is biased by the structure it has when you are born, but the environment is the one that provides the impulses, and because the sort of impulses can change the neuron's tendencies, you may not develop some tendencies you had when you were born.
In the end, your personality is a result of what you were in the beginning and by everything that happens. You may have a tendency to kill, but not develop it because a nice environment, and otherwise you may be initially a good natured person, and yet because a bloody murderer if you live in an environment that demands it.
yeah, they made lab rats watch will and grace, exposed them to barney and Mr. Rogers, and had rainbow colored lighting...
that doesn't mean that just becuase its a enviromental cuase of homosexuality that we should encourage it.
Have you actually tried this, or are you just assuming that it won't work?
Assumption is the brother of all fuckups.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
"Oh and my favorite...gays are born that way."
It's nice to know that I'm one of the world's ills. And yes, I do think I was born this way, but what do I know, I'm just a gay man.
There IS considerable statistical evidence that "gays are born that way." The proportion of world populations tends to average between 10-15% gay, despite wide differences in cultures, morals, religions, and lifestyles. That is a very strong link to there being a genetic prediliction, rather than a cultural one.
"Far more women than men are 'super-tasters', as the 25% of people who are especially sensitive to bitterness are formally known."
So that's the excuse now eh? "Sorry honey, I can't because I am a Super Taster"
10-15%? Where do you get that statistic from? It is complete balony to believe that 1 in every 10 or 3 in every 20 are gay.
"I disagree w/ 1 thing U said, I can't take ANYTHING U said seriously = I don't like bulldogs, I hate all animals
This gave me a good laugh, as it reminded me of something from the online comic wigu. In the nurses office of the elementary school there's a poster which says something along the lines of "Hitler is bad. Drugs are bad. If you do drugs you're like Hitler!".
We put them in jail because they bother us. It is as simple as that. Society defends itself. What's wrong with that. I don't see how people may not be entirely responsible for their actions means that significant parts of our goverment, society, and justice system are flawed. It isn't their job to determine responsibility is it?
It seems that everytime someone experiences abnormal behavior, these scientists want to blame it on genetics. Give me a break.
These scientists? What is there, some sort of international conspriacy that people are initiated into after obtaining their PhD?
These articles seem to want to blame all of the worlds ills on genetics.
Obviously you didn't read the articles as one is about pain thresholds and the other is about eating behaivors (picky eaters--not liking/liking surgary/fat foods). Unless of course, you consider the obese to be the world's evils. Even still, what does the amount of pain you can withstand have to do with the world's evil's? Are "wimps" to fall into such a category too?
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
There seems to be a drive to explain persons solely through their genes. Anyone who feels that way: This is a dangerous road to Nazism. The believe to be able to identify criminals by their genes before they even committed a crime, indeed before they're even born has the potential for Nazi scale horrors.
One last thing: The human genome is a few hundred MByte. The human brain's capacity is estimated in the Petabyte region. That alone should dispell the myth that the genes are everything.
Terribly sorry... "evils" should read "ills". I must have simply projected my sense of what you meant onto what you actually did say.
Even still, I believe my argument applies.
If you other posts didn't speak to the contrary, I would think you were a troll.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
Yea, I can only wish. My father is quite the ladies' man while I am reading slashdot.
"It tastes like burning!" -Ralph
http://www.codebushido.com
its a website!
if you think the major facets of your personality are based on how much you feel pain and how well you taste things. I'd like to think that human personalities have a bit more depth to them than that.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
This is a link to a story about an schizophrenia gene. And here is an article about the search of autism genes.
It was the first comment making such a statement!
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
Alright... would someone explain me WHY THE FUCK THIS GETS MODDED -1, FLAMEBAIT AND THE PARENT +3, INSIGHTFUL!?
Oh, and i also wonder why the ``Gays are the "worlds ills"??'' comment was modded to 0, troll.
So, mod me -1, tolerant please.
So tell me... what got you inflicted with the baby-producing disease known as heterosexuality? Were you born that way? Of course not, you decided somewhere along the way that you just simply like the opposite sex. Is my sarcasm showing yet?
If you felt like your sexual choices were natural, then why do you assume (out of ignorance) that gays didn't feel their sexual development was natural as well? Why would anyone choose to be discriminated against???
On the other hand, if you clearly believe you decided to be straight, then embrace freedom and let others make their own choices.
Either way, your tired old thinking is so... twentieth century!
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I understand the point you are making, and agree with most of it, but I would like to clarify a point you made.
You stated:Thus, the learning process depends, initially on two factors: the structure at time 0 (the initial structure, e.g. the brain when you are born) and the structure at the time a person receive the impulses (the brain after experimenting and processing all the impulses one got up to now).
IANA Biologist, yet I think you have over-simplied the interconnected nature of nature vs. nuture. First, Once the brain begins developing in the womb, environmental factors definately are at work. For instance, what if the mother does crack? Research has also indicated that the phonemes of the mothers language are already beginning to be recognized, though most of this development begins during early infancy.
Second, genetic influences continue to play an active role in development, even after birth, even after the brain is fully matured. What if, for example, I happen to have genes related to Alzheimer's, making proteins build up in my synapses. Furthermore, does own consider this to be an environmental or a genetic influence? Obviously, the genes were the original cause, but the protein buildup could be consider an environment of the brain. With a different envroment altogether (say the presence of certain medications), the Alzheimer's may be somewhat retarded. Aso, the absense of such drugs can be considered to be an environmental condition in itself.
Personally, I think breaking developmental/behaivoral influences down into a genetic/environment debate is somewhat ludicrous. After all, aren't your genes your environment too? It's just that we have this notion that our genes are us, and we don't want to be mere automatons created by our environment. Personally, I think the debate should stick to the soul/physical debate where it belongs so it doesn't confuse people about science.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
They're really starting to understand how people feel about things.
But to know you is to know your weaknesses. And to know your weaknesses is to have power over you. And having power over you makes you less of a free human being and more of a tool.
But it's all academic, isn't it? People who can't come to this conclusion on their own, do so because they're unable to recognize it. And if they can't recognize it, they won't understand it, even if carefully presented to them. So this is merely a nod to the people who also find it interesting that people believe they've finally stumbled on reality through "reality" television.
What I'm trying to say, is that one person's enlightenment from reality television, is another persons opportunity for enlightenment in reality reality.
Dendrite count and branch order (depth of the "threads) is been known to have some genetic basis. More branches is thought to mean that learning takes place (in the hypocampus, a memory center of the brain), and it seems that some people are genetically dumb. If not people, then certainly lab rats that can't learn to navigate a maze for a reward (such as food or an addictive drug).
I suggest you read Slashdot
In fact, this correlates with one twin study I read a long time ago- the two brothers were separated at birth, one was somewhat well off, the other grew up poor (and was raised in an orphanage). The poor one was an introvert, while the other was an extrovert. Of note, however, was that both smoked the same brand of cigarettes, and used the same obscure, imported toothpaste.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Exactly.
Which is why, for example, it is NOT valid to let someone like O.J. Simpson go with the excuse that, "He was abused! He killed two people but that's ok because he was abused!" That's a bunch of bullshit.
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that:
O.J. Simpson
*D*I*D*
kill two people. In my opinion.
Take a look at the dept, noob.
They've had a song "Taste the Pain" since before 1989.
Those guys are brilliant.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
How you turn out is due to: 90% genetic factors 5% upbringing and life experience factors 5% luck
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
That's not exactly true. Ideal science might be, but in reality, no. Science is and has always been a product of scientists ans therefore in the power of their ambitions, opinions and ideals. Science is also not just a collection of data, but also the interpretation af that data. And who does the interpretations? Scientists. And scientists are human, after all.
This has linked COMT with a gene. (for those who didn't read the article it "cleans up" after a dopamine chemical linked in sensing pain)
Is it really all that revealing that COMT production is genetically based. Anymore than it is to say insulin production is genetically based.
Regardless, the whole "nature v. nurture" debate is a futile argument when it comes to explaining individual action and the personality that defines those actions.
Esp. when one has a much more reliable and immediate explanation for one's actions, which is to say conscious "choice." Something which we have a much more intimate connection to.
(Sure it's easy to say our conscious choices are mere illusion created from a chain of causation in a reductionist universe... of course doing requires that "illusion" to believe in the reality of reductionism.)
At best genetics and enviorrment are probability guidelines in judging the possible future actions/personalities of an individual. However they are a piss poor way to explain human actions as a whole.
Odyssey, a show on NPR, just had a discussion about some of these same issues and the realaudio link can found here:
e du le/hd_sched_light.htm&BodyURL=/schedule/odyssey/od yssey_v2.htm
http://www.wbez.org/frames.asp?readerURL=../sch
It was quite good, and I think the consensus of their panel (an MIT chemical biologist, a University of Chicago geneticist, and another panel member, I forget from where) was that we are a long way off from reducing human behavior to genes alone.
jeff
"They taste like burning." -Ralph
my kids, my cousins, and my siblings.
Three different age groups that grew up in completely different surroundings.
At a recent wedding I watched as my cousin sat and ate EXACTLY like my son and sister do.
they walk with the same heavy foot steps.
they whine about the same thing.
they have the same low pain thresholds
they basicly suck.
Not only do they look alike they act alike such that they could easily pass off for each other (save for the age differences.)
freaky freaky freaky.
It was this realization that allowed me to see why and how my son drives me up the wall. He has the same exact mannerisms as my oldest brother and baby sister.
You cannot fight genetics!!!
comment directly in my journal
I only have this anecdotal evidence for the 1 in 10 statistic... it seems valid to me in my experience.
In a city in the midwest (not a big one), I worked at a software company. In the main building with all the developers, there were hallways with ten offices in each. There was one gay person that I knew about in each hallway but two... one of those hallways had two gay people, and one had none.
Thus, one in ten.
Well, until you went to the floor where all of customer service and support was, in which case it was a lot closer to one in five.
I make no claim to have known every single gay person there (why would I? I'm sure engineering isnt' the most "out" profession, and I'm certain there were closet cases and bisexuals that I knew nothing about). But it's been quite similar at just about every place I've worked over my long life.
To me, one in ten is quite believable. And even three in twenty isn't over-board if you add bisexuals and closet cases and all that stuff to the count.
So I honestly don't think it's "complete baloney".
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
You might want to read As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto. It's the story of a baby boy who lost his penis, and his parents and doctors tried to convince him that he was a girl. It didn't work. Genes have more influence than you might think.
A related article links your sense of taste to your risk for cancer, heart disease, etc.
Ok, enough stretching here. That has to do with EATING habits. The sense of taste only affects health as a behavior modifying agent. Don't make more of it than it is.
and it tastes like chicken!
On the time 0: in reality could be the just after the conception, just after the crossover and mutations took place, and the process has begun. Yet, I agree the environment is always an influence. When I refer to a time 0 it should be understood the time just before the environment begun influencing you directly . Trying to set a start point, but in reality, there's no starting point, because the environment influenced you before people considered you'd exist, that is, all the events that led your parents to meet, have sex, etc.
IANA Biologist, yet I think you have over-simplied the interconnected nature of nature vs. nuture.
I oversimplified, no wonder. This is not a scientific magazine and I'd not expect for people to be interested in every detail of the process. The people who are interested in these matters, should and will look for technical reading.
Second, genetic influences continue to play an active role in development, even after birth, even after the brain is fully matured.
Certainly. It's not like your identity is erased after you are born. Everything one learns is roughly result of a function that involves the biological structure (what genes made up) and what you already learned. The gene influence is not erased, I didn't mean that.
It's just that we have this notion that our genes are us, and we don't want to be mere automatons created by our environment.
There's the other side: people that do not want to believe they are what they are just because their genes and that they have no hope to be changed. Is a person an automaton created by the environment or an automaton created by their genes and without hope to be changed at all? Both questions lead to displeasing ideas.
Researchers believe that further investigation may lead to revealing the source of ALS (Advanced Lawyer Syndrome), which is manifest by a high level of insensitivity to feeling their clients' pain. ALS is a recessive trait currently thought to be caused by one or several genetic mutations on Chromosome 7.
"...it seems, to me, that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes."
Are not our genes influnced by our environment, all be it in a longer time line? So really this complicates the whole nature vs nuture matter even more. Just my two cents.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
This is such drivel. That score of one is horrid.
Trying to prove their ideas "scientifically" is an idea that has been taken up by the far left and the far right in the past, and many of the scientific conclusions of both left and right have over time been shown to be ridiculous. On the left you have the Marxist tradition of "scientific socialism" that "scientifically proves" that there is a dialectically material force of history that will lead to the unstoppable triumph of communism. On the right you have eugenics, the Bell Curve, and "science" proving socially darwinistic ideas, and that human behavior is genetically determined. These ideas, both the scientific socialist and eugenic science ideas were very popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century, but time has shown massive gaps in both of these body of ideas, and they both also lead to some extent to the massive exterminations carried out under Hitler and Stalin. But aside from the toll of ideas, is the simple fact that I think time has shown that many of these so-called scientific ideas have a lot of holes in them.
When a scientist points his telescope at the sky, it doesn't really have much of a social effect on earth nowadays (although centuries ago, Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy for touting the Copernican system, and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his works on Copernican astronomy). When the lens is pointed at humans however, especially human behavior, you are sure that there will be plenty of people grabbing "scientific" research and using it to push their social agendas. So much so, that I have an enormous amount of skepticism about virtually any "scientific" model of human behavior, including psychiatry and psychology. That someone has "scientific" proof of some aspect of human behavior, in this case, that it's predetermined by genetics, really has to be taken with a grain of salt. As do anthropological and sociological studies that show humans are generally better off cooperating and working for the greater good (social anarchism) as opposed to competing (capitalism). These kind of ideas usually break down into left wing and right wing people either supporting or disputing the theories, breaking down among political lines, and so on and so forth, I can't think of anything more unscientific than that. That it's been scientifically proven that "our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes" is the epitomy of what sounds like political propaganda - the nurture versus nature debate is an ancient philosophical debate, and from my discussions with scientists who know more about the genome project than I do, they are barely able to use the information they have cataloged to solve medical problems (despite the hype - which is needed for funding), never mind have scientifically set in stone the answer to a fundamental philosophical question about human nature. I take this news with a huge grain of salt.
>"Ethnobotanist Timothy Johns, of McGill University in Toronto, found Bartoshuk's work..."
Talk about inspiring confidence in the sources.
McGill is in Montreal, it has two campuses, but neither is in Toronto, just goto McGill, look up Timothy Johns in the directory, then consult a campus map - his office is in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec (~10 miles South-West of downtown Montreal).
Why not write "MIT is in New York City"?
I bet fear tastes like chicken.
People do the same things because they are similar and are in similar environments.
You said: "Blaming a person does just as much good as blaming their genes."
If people have no free will, why shouldn't they be treated like objects? Discarded if useless, defective or don't meet standards.
Who decides what's defective? How about those who have free will? Or you might say those who have an illusion of free will.
If you say you have free will, we can blame you - it's your responsibility.
If you say you don't have free will, the rest of us have the responsibility of what to do with "you" (there is no you after all). If you are defective we can choose to restrict "you" or discard "you". I say discard not kill because you are a dead or lifeless object.
Of course a dead object that once lived might be treated with a bit more respect than an object that never lived.
Why such loaded words? According to the research cited, subjects felt different amounts of pain from the same stimulus. If I feel pain that I'd rate at 6 on a scale of 0 to 10, and after the same stimulus someone else rated their pain a 3, all that says is I am feeling more pain than the other person. It does not say anything about how well I can withstand pain.
It extremely common for people to believe that the same amount of tissue damage causes the same amount of pain for anyone. However, pain researchers knew long before this study that this belief is a fallacy. [Pain: The Science of Suffering by Patrick Wall, Columbia University Press, 2000.]
Perception of pain is a complex event, modified by genetics, culture, experience, anxiety level, perceived purpose of the pain, expected duration, etc. This study is looking at a single variable, and the only thing really interesting is that it suggests that some of the inherited variability is tied to a alleles of a specific gene.
Denise
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. - Epictetus
For me pain has a smell. The worse I hurt myself the stronger it is. Sometimes I can even smell it when I'm just thinking about getting hurt. Or when I'm about to do something stupid that is likely to get me hurt. Yeah.
(nt)
Actually, they had footage of female mice running around trying to hump other female mice. Pretty convincing really.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
1.) Underpants.
2.) ???
3.) Pain.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
did you just say your son sucks? Man if he grows up and inds this post, imagine the therapy bills.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
They have video of lesbian mice? Man those scientists have some freaky fetishes.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
"[I]t seems to me that our personalities appear to be much less influenced by out environment and more by our genes."
:-P
I can vouch for that. I am very outgoing and musical and into drama and acting, like my mom. My sister is very serious and intent and driven, like my dad. Both grew up in a normal family with both parents present, but we are very different from one another, but much like one of our parents.
Aside from my personal experience, I have seen many studies that show that twins, raised separately, such as twin orphans adopted by different couples, will grow up to have very similar personalities.
If anybody can find these studies online, post a link. I'm tired.
If everything was genetic then we'd all have the same culture and customs. Just because modifying a gene creates an effect doesn't mean that same effect can't be created by other non-genetic means.
Everyone and his dog knows that behavior tends to run along cultural/social lines.
Ask any modern psychologist and they'll tell you that the only people who talk about Nature versus Nurture are Psych 101 students. The concept is old and buried (as the field has come to the realization that psychological principles are more unified in nature).
A correlary would for someone to say that big iron and dumb terminals are the way of the future because your Comp Sci 101 handbook published in 1978 says so.
Someone else mentioned the pseudo-science of eugenics and social darwinism. Both are known to be BS. The problem is that it took a long time for the field of psychology to shake them and become a formal science.
The problem is that most people think it is so "obvious" that the field can be mastered in a sixteen week freshman level course. People like that are the Script Kiddies of the psych world.
What is music when you despise all sound?
I get this statistic from my brother, who happens to be gay and is a practicing M.D. who has done research on the topic. He claims he hates it and wishes he was straight (he was for a while and was very unhappy). He says he wouldn't wish it on anyone as a life...but that's just the way he is. He didn't come out until his late thirties...as always, YMMV, but it's hard to beat his perspective on the issue...
Wow! A mouse that actually eats the Pussy :)
hehe
get it?
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Hmm to me pain can only have a smell if something's burning ...
.. ...
and
It's a feeling of AUCH,
It's a smell (and probably the taste) of burned flesh
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If you believe all the reductionist crap that comes out of genetics today, you should also believe there is a gene that determines whether you'll fall prey to absurdly reductionist pseudo-scientific theories like genetic determinism.
When you reach your teenage years, you're programmed to tend to irritate and be irritated by what your relatives to. That's part of what is supposed to urge the youngsters to leave the village more and more...and in the process keep it safer by harrassing the nearby lions. Their feeling of invincibility also helps them to more effectively harrass the lions...
DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft) wrote:
Willst Du schön sein
musst Du leiden
und Leiden ist schön
What's the logic of these researchers?
...most male supertasters enjoy fatty, sugary
> Most [supertasters] shun foods rich in sugar
> and fat...As a result supertasters tend to be
> thinner...
>
>
> foods and tend to be heavier
F*cking idjits. I would hate to think this is the researchers who wrote results like this and that it's some typically scientifically illiterate hack writer.
I recall a study from over 20 years ago where fat people tended to like foods heavier in fats than in sugars. Thinner people preferred sweeter foods. This was because fats packed more calories per unit than sugars, believe it or not. Fat people don't sit around on sofas eating cakes and donuts -- they sit around on sofas eating cheeseburgers and pizzas.
Did they have any other, less esoteric foods you might actually have around the house you could test yourself with?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
It's kind of a scary thought knowing that perhaps things in life are more natural than nurturing.
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
Taste and pain, crucial traits that our ancestors must have needed in order to survive are genetically related? Wow. I'd never have guessed that.
Next you'll be telling me gender is genetic...
Dave.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I posted this comment as a reply to warn users about the parent post (which since has been removed) and I get modded down. What a deal!
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
As to whether the system which we call "consciousness" is in fact determinate.
You've already assumed a universal cause and effect relationship in a reductionist world (That is to say one's consciousness is formed from determinate features, therefor it too must be determinate.)
Assuming every effect can be traced to a determinate cause is a useful assumption to make. However it is unscientific on its own, *especially* when dealing with non-linear dynamic systems where wholly new and previously unpredicted properties can emerge (the whole is more than the sum of its parts). In humans this thing we call consciousness can be said to be such a system, and thus can not be explained via the prosperities of its parts alone, but rather the properties of its whole.
At best when dealing with such systems we can only suggest probabilities in human action. As such, even if there is a gene that makes people have a tendency to be lazy, some can still act to over come it. Because complex human behavior is an assortment of genetic parts, environmental factors *and* consciousness feedback.
Based on personal observation only, that comes as no surprise. Just LOOK around. 90 out of 100 gay men I've come across are thinner, narrower shouldered, and have higher voices. I don't mean that in the diet and excercise sense either. I mean narrower boned, narrower shoulders, hips, and legs, etc. For a profound example of this just walk into your local uber-chic coffee joint with all the black turtleneck wearing gay artiste types. I'm an average sized out of shape geek-boy, but I feel like an NFL linebacker in those places.
I have to admit that I am surprised by your 1 in 10 anecdotal evidence -- in the midwest.
I would not be surprised to find a 1 in 10 ratio in some places, areas which are bigger gay population centers. But here in the midwest? Interesting.
I'm in eastern Kansas near KC and do not find 1 in 10 to seem to be true here. I wonder if this could vary in different parts of the midwest, or if perhaps your experience is maybe atypical. Could this developer have relocated people from somewhere with a higher ratio of gays, thus causing their employee population to be disproportionately higher than the general population? Or maybe atypical in some other way. Or maybe your experience genuinely reflects the general population in your area. Just curious.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The "midwest" city I speak of is Columbus Ohio, which probably does have a higher percentage of gays than other smaller midwest cities. There is zero chance the employer went out of their way to reach out to gays, though. This was the early 90's as well. The executive management at this company was pretty oblivious regarding sexual orientation issues. The VP for human resources didn't even realize they employed *any* gay people.
Various different career tracks also seem to have differing percentages of gay people in them. As far as programming and software development, it seems about 'average' (between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20). With marketing types, the percentage of gays seems to skew lower. With customer service, the percentage seems to skew significantly higher.
Go figure.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Interesting.
In my experience, in the early 1990's and even '89, the only very openly gays were in marketing.
I have also met a few gay QA people.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.